In America, just as in a great melting-pot, cultures and religions blend in the search for a new synthesis and faith, manufactured by man, and wrongly hope that it will unite all people around it, and will set us free from religious divisions and opposition.
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)
For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost (Lk. 19:10) Beloved brethren! These merciful words that we hear today in the Gospel are spoken by God become man about the sinner whom God’s righteous judgment had pronounced lost, but who was sought out by the power and grace of redemption, and numbered by it among the saved.
Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev)
There is much in common among the three hierarchs and great ecumenical teachers whom we commemorate today: Saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom. All three lived in a time when the Christian Church, after almost three centuries of persecution, received freedom and was flourishing throughout the Byzantine ‘oikoumene’. All the three were involved in contesting contemporary heresies. All the three combined serving the Church in episcopal rank with literary activity, and it is precisely their literary legacy which secured for them the paramount place that they occupy in Christian Tradition. All the three were victims of ecclesiastical intrigues. Their posthumous glory, however, exceeded any expectations their contemporaries might have had, and their significance for the entire Christian Church in East and West cannot be overestimated.
Rating: 3,9|Votes: 15
Once he is told that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by, he begins to yell at the top of his lungs: "He called out, 'Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!'
Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky)
Rating: 9,5|Votes: 2
The time has come when mankind has been consumed with activities which displease God, in which the Enemy of mankind reigns, and, as they said in old days, this Enemy makes everyone dance to his flute. This fuss and bother, which envelops our daily lives, is distasteful to God, and God is absent from it, and the Enemy of God is master and ruler of it. If we gave the promise to renounce Satan and all his works, then we must fulfill it, and try not to crush our souls with daily cares, remembering what the Church teaches: “there is one thing needful,” only one thing necessary—to remember that we must unite ourselves with Christ, that is, not only fulfill His commandments but to try to unite with Him.
